172: Why I’m Taking A Break

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps after Babies radio episode number 172.

Hello and welcome to Biceps after Babies radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PRs. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife, and mom of four.  Each week, my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise mindset, personal development, and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel, and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you, my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in, now let’s jump into today’s episode.

 

 

Why I'm taking a break 0:48  

Hey, Hey, Hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps after Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and by looking at the title of this podcast episode, you probably have some questions and some curiosity about what is going on. In fact, I have a podcast schedule that I share with the team, and because we collaborate in putting, you know, putting the podcast together, and so I had put this podcast title into the plan, and Amber Every who is our growth manager messaged me on Slack and is like, “What is going on? I'm so curious. What is happening?” So by now you've seen the title, “Why I'm taking a break.” And let me kind of just tell you what's going on and what you can kind of expect over the next couple of months.

 

It’s time to take a break 1:35  

So first of all, I have been recording this podcast since 2018. Yeah, 2018, and it's been three years, and in three years, I have never missed a Tuesday. I've never missed putting a podcast episode up, and as I mentioned in one of my in the episode that I did about my typical week that the way that I typically do podcast is I do I batch content, so I'll batch six to eight podcast episodes in one to two weeks, and then I'll have a month or so to be able to not have to record anything and then go back and batch things again, and so, this last time as I was going through batching the content, I started to feel a very familiar like feeling, and maybe it was like a lack, an absence of excitement, an absence of feeling inspiration as I went through, and it felt just like recording the podcast kind of felt just another thing that I had to do. Just like another thing that I had to check off my list, and I was, I didn't feel excited about it. I didn't feel inspired. I didn't feel like, “Oh, this is something I really want to do.” And I realized that after three years of recording that I need to take a break and this is not forever. In fact, I'm really only just taking the month of December off, but I just realized it's time. It's time to take a break. I can see the signs. I've kind of been here before where this like lack of inspiration kind of comes up, and I need to listen that I encourage you guys to rest and recover and rejuvenate, and that's so important in the gym, and it's also important in our personal areas of life, and I just feel like for the last three years, I've been very consistent and running this marathon and producing content, and I've loved it, and it's been so fun. And I'm just getting to the point where I'm just recognizing I need to take a break for me, and I'm hoping that when I come back, I will feel rejuvenated, I will feel excited, I will feel ready and inspired and want to get on here and podcast for you. 

 

I’ll take a month long off on December  3:52 

So my plan as of now is to take the month of December off, so there, I won't be recording any new episodes during December. What we will be doing during December is we will be releasing some of our previous episodes, so some of the episodes that we really love or that you really love that maybe you've missed, especially if you're newer to the podcast, we're going to be re releasing those podcast episodes, so you'll still see an episode every week come out and have something to listen to. I just won't be recording new content during the month of December, and then my plan as of now, of course, I reserve the right to change my plan. But my plan as of now is to come back in January with more content, more things that are exciting, and get back on track with recording new things for you.

 

Difference between quitting and pivoting  4:43  

So let's plan, when Amber messaged me on Slack, she's like, “Hey, what's going on? What's what's happening?” She was really curious, and she asked some really really good questions that I thought would be very helpful to kind of go through because I think there can be a fine line between quitting something and pivoting and that's something that I've had to kind of distinguish in my life or quitting something and take or taking a break from something. Those are also two different things and I think it's been really important in my life to be able to distinguish those things because there's oftentimes that we need to do something different that we need to pivot and sometimes I think we can stay in things longer than maybe we should because we don't want to quit. We've been told, “Don't quit”, that's, you know, “don't be a quitter.” And I think that sometimes that does more harm than good. And we say, “Doing things maybe are not of the highest value for us longer than necessary because we feel like we need to just grit our teeth and we just need to make it happen.

 

Distinguishing how to enjoy life and recognize that hard things aren’t always fun  5:49  

So one of the questions that Amber asked me that I thought would be valuable to kind of discuss here is how to balance, having fun, or feeling inspired, or feeling excited to do something with the inevitability that not everything that we do in our life is fun, or inspiring and that sometimes we do things because that's it needs to be done, right? It just has to get done. That doesn't mean it's not it's not bad, it's fun, right? And she gave the example she's like, “You know, sometimes I like you need to put the dishes away and it's not fun but it's like something that needs to be done.” And so how do you distinguish between enjoying your life, right? And we want fun, but recognizing that hard things aren't always fun. It's not always fun to do hard things. In fact, there's a lot of times that it kind of sucks to do hard things, so where do you find that line between making a decision to stop something or pivot something or take a break from something with that knowledge that just sometimes it's hard. Sometimes you're in the dip. Sometimes it's challenging and so when do you push through that and just suck it up and do the thing, and when do you say, “Hey, I need to take a break.” And I thought that was such a great question, and specifically, she was asking in terms of business: how do you make that decision? Is it when things stop becoming fun?  And my answer is, that, to me, it is less about whether something is fun and more about if I was feeling inspired to do it. And I will say that I never make decisions, when that's a new feeling. So I like the first time that I don't feel inspired, I don't ever make the decision to quit on that first feeling or even the second or even like the third or fourth or fifth time. To me, it's like when I have that repeated experience, that's when I know it's like, “Okay, this is more than just, sometimes things aren't fun. And that's okay, things aren't always going to be fun.” 

 

Difference between things aren’t fun and things aren’t always going to be fun  8:01 

The difference between that and the difference between, “Hey, you may actually be more effective if you took a break.” And I think that's the thing that I've been trying to remind myself is that this applies to so many areas of fitness, reverse dieting, and like lifting is that sometimes we keep going, because we think taking a break is going to slow us down. We think doing a reverse diet is going to make the process slower, we think taking recovery days or rest days is going to make us weaker, when in reality, a well placed rest day, and doing that reverse diet. In the end it actually gets you so much further in your journey, and that's what I've started to recognize is that I've never taken a break in three years of podcasting and a well placed recovery. A good place, taking a break is actually going to make me more effective. 

 

Recognize and reflect  8:54  

And when I started to notice that I felt like the content wasn't as good as it had been in the past, and I reflected on that and realize that was because of the space that I was coming from, that made it a lot easier for me to say, “Hey, I want to keep my content at a certain level. I want to give you guys who are listening a certain level of effort and content and education and entertainment and all of the things and I felt that sliding  and I knew that that was sliding because of me needing to take a break. 

 

Contrasts creates clarity  9:28 

So I really and  the thing was that was funny too that kind of helped me like I kind of been tossing this around for a little bit, honestly and the thing that kind of made me pull the trigger and say “Yeah, I think this is the right move for me”, was this last week I had a coaching call,  and I got off that coaching call, and I was like on cloud nine. It was so fun. It was such an amazing experience. I provided a ton of value to the clients. They had some amazing breakthroughs. And I got off that call and just felt inspired. Like that's the word that just keeps coming to me. I just felt so inspired, and in alignment with like what I wanted to be doing, and then I always say, “Contrast creates clarity”, because the next thing that I needed to do was record a podcast, and I felt the contrast in how I felt at the end of the coaching call versus like going to record this podcast. And I was like, “Yes, I see the difference.” I see the difference of what it feels like to be in alignment and to feel really inspired and excited and lit up versus feeling like something is just becoming something that I have to do. So I think that if I do I say contrast creates that clarity, and that contrast for me helped to remind me. Yeah, taking a break is actually sometimes the best thing that you can do. 

 

Have time to pause and recenter oneself  10:46 

So my goal is to rest, to recover, to get inspired again, to get excited to get on here and record, and I think taking a break for a month is going to be just the thing that I need. So I thank you for your grace, I thank you for your patience, I thank you for your understanding, and I hope that this can be an example to you of sometimes it's not about quitting, it's not about stopping what you're doing. It's just about pushing pause, and recentering, taking care of yourself, and then coming back to something and feeling a lot better, and being able to do it at a higher, higher level.

 

What to expect during the break  11:40  

So what will you notice, you'll just notice that every week, we'll be releasing old podcast episodes, they just won't be new podcast we're gonna handpick these, so once that I think, even if you've listened to them before, will be incredibly valuable to listen to, again, especially if it's been a while since you listen to them. We're gonna pick some of the most like downloaded episodes to the ones that you guys really resonate with, and really, or that you really liked and enjoyed. So I highly recommend even if you have heard them before, like if you've listened to every podcast that I've ever put out, re-listen to the podcast that we put over the next four weeks, because I think there will still be new things that will hit you in a different space. I always tell my clients this, you can hear something, when you are at a certain part of your journey and when you go, you know, six months, a year, two years later and listen to the exact same thing, things will hit differently for you because you'll be in a different space in your journey learning different lessons and you're going to hear things differently and I've seen that in my clients as they've gone through the Macros 101 content multiple times when they're in different parts of their journey and they get different things out of it, so same thing with the podcast. So I'm gonna encourage you to really listen but we'll be doing the best of releases over the next four weeks, and then I will be back in January. Fingers crossed hopefully rested, rejuvenated and ready to kick off 2022 with a bang. Thanks for understanding guys. That wraps up this episode of biceps after babies Radio. I'm Amber, now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

 

Outro

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